According to a Washington Post study detailing frequency of shooting deaths at the hands of police for the year of 2017, Washington State bears the disturbing statistic of 5.38 shootings per one million people, or thirty-eight deadly shootings for the calendar year of 2017. This figure is astonishingly high, compared to other states with large metropolitan cities such as New York and Illinois, which have 0.81 deadly shootings per one million/sixteen deadly shootings in 2017, and 1.55 deadly shootings per one million/twenty deadly shootings in 2017 respectively.[1]

In 2010, as a result of a letter sent to the Justice Department from the ALCU of Washington together with dozens of Seattle community groups, the City of Seattle was mandated to comply with a series of court-ordered reforms regarding the Seattle Police Department’s use of excessive force.[2] Among these reforms, were mandates that Officers file a use-of-force report when a gun is pointed at a civilian, as well as the establishment of a Crisis Intervention Committee centered upon providing training for officers in their interactions with the mentally ill.[3] In a watershed ruling delivered by U.S. District Court Judge James Robart on Wednesday, January 10th, the Seattle Police Department was declared to be in “full and effective compliance” with all court ordered reforms. Following this ruling, the City of Seattle will be subjected to a two-year audit, in which the city must demonstrate they are implementing required departmental reforms successfully.[4] To name a few, these advancements include improving SPD’s relationship with “isolated communities”, as well as addressing concerns regarding the “disproportionate number of Blacks and Latinos that are stopped and frisked.”[5]

In addition to the goal of improving the relationship between the Seattle Police Department and communities of color, it is apparent that the Department still has a long way to go since implementation of the Crisis Intervention Committee. This reality is epitomized in the shooting death of Charleena Lyles, a pregnant mother of three who was killed by Seattle Police Officers in early June of 2017. Lyles, who had a history of mental illness, reportedly threatened officers with knives when the officers responded to a domestic violence call at her home.[6] Although both officers had completed Crisis Intervention Training in defusing dangerous situations with armed subjects, they failed to use less that lethal options such as a taser.[7] According to Mitch Barker, former Executive Director of the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, communication with individuals with mental illness or in suffering from a mental health breakdown represents the greatest ongoing challenge for police.[8]

​Compliance and implementation of the initial period of court ordered reforms represents a progressive and commendable step in the right direction for the Seattle Police Department. However, the true test of the success of these reforms will be measured in the effectiveness of the department’s policy and training changes within the next several years. If the Seattle Police are going to begin to mend their relationship with communities most detrimentally affected by the Department’s actions, then deadly use of force must habitually become a last resort, rather than an autogenic reaction.

[3] Miletich, Steve, and Mike Carter. “SPD Faces New Oversight, Scrutiny of Use of Force.” The Seattle Times, The Seattle Times Company, 28 July 2012, www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/spd-faces-new-oversight-scrutiny-of-use-of-force/.

In response to instances of horrific partner abuse, particularly domestic abuse inflicted against women, many states enacted social policy and legislation beginning in the 1970s focused on protecting women against abusive partners, and expanding legal resources to punish perpetrators. Before the enactment of these legal protections, women suffering domestic violence had virtually no avenues to seek legal redress. In fact, until the legal reforms of the late 1970s, a woman was not able to obtain a restraining order against a violent husband unless she was willing to undergo the arduous process of filing for divorce at the same time.[1] This legislation symbolized a monumental societal shift in the nature of responses to domestic violence. For many years, resolutions to instances of domestic abuse excluded legal intervention, and focused instead on alternative solutions such as family crisis intervention, or counseling for perpetrators with substance abuse issues.[2]

By 1980, forty-seven states, including Washington State had passed domestic violence legislation mandating drastic changes for protection orders, enabling warrantless arrests for misdemeanor assaults.[3] These legislative changes facilitated the ability of a victim of domestic violence to obtain a Temporary Restraining Order, or (TRO), which enables the abuser to be promptly ejected from the household, and often restricts the abuser from interacting with, or even seeing one’s children. Certainly the enactment of protective legislation for victims of domestic violence represents a quintessential step in the right direction for American social policy. Unfortunately, this progress comes with a constitutional price.

Although Temporary Restraining Orders are only effective for a short period of time, 14 days, courts routinely extend them indefinitely with little or no evidence of abuse. The consequence of this trend, is that fathers are being routinely deprived of their parental rights without any procedural safeguards. The law does not provide automatic rights to unmarried fathers regarding their children. These rights often must be established by written agreements through the courts,[4] where as an unmarried mother has automatic custody over her child, regardless of her fitness as a parent.[5]​The reality of a lack of procedural safeguards affording due process to fathers through the issuance of TROs has a detrimental effect on the children caught in the midst of domestic disputes.[6] In association with acceleration of child-custody litigation in the past decade, thousands of children are alienated from their fathers, whose “unfitness” to be involved in the child’s life is often determined solely on the word of the mother. Promoting the constitutional protections of fathers through a more streamlined and structured legal process for granting Temporary Restraining Orders would not in any way let culpable perpetrators of domestic abuse off scot-free, but would rather aid in obtaining justice for loving fathers who desperately wish to be involved in their child’s life.

[1] U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (January 1982). Under the Rule of Thumb, Battered Women and theAdministration of Justice. Washington, DC.

[2] Bard, Morton, and Joseph Zacker (1971). "The Prevention of Family Violence: Dilemmas ofCommunity Interaction." Journal of Marriage and the Family 33:677-682.

[3] Gardner, Richard, “Denial of the Parental Alienation Syndrome Also Harms Women.” The American Journal of Family Therapy, vol. 30, 2002, pp. 191–202.

Despite the existence of laws specifically designed to provide a cause of action for employees who make complaints about work practices that they reasonably believe are discriminatory and/or sexually harassing, the majority of employees will not complain. Most will not report discrimination or harassment to management and, if at all possible, will avoid voluntarily testifying to any wrongdoing by their employer.A number of women have recently come forward with complaints of sexual harassment against those with the power to affect their careers. Countless others are attesting to having experienced the same through social media’s #MeToo on Twitter. In some instances, these women are bringing allegations of sexual assault and abuse that took place several decades ago. Why is this happening?Some no longer care what their employers think, including those who have retired or moved on to other ventures where they can now speak out fearlessly from a place of emotional confidence and economic security. But this does not explain why their public emergence at this time has significance or is even relevant to the initial claims they made. For many who are coming forward now, the statute of limitations for bringing legal action on their claims has long since passed so they lack a chance at justice for themselves. More important is whether the “#MeToo” campaign can help prove sexual harassment for those whose claims have been timely brought. The simple answer is, it depends on the judge assigned to one’s case and the jurisdiction in which your case is filed, but it likely can be used in some way.Merely pointing to others who allege past sexual harassment against your employer is not sufficient to prove your own allegations, but the existence of these other women and the descriptions of harassment they provide is relevant to demonstrating a general attitude of disrespect towards women that your employer allows to exist, as well as to giving examples of a specific actor’s sexual objectification of women.That attitude in the workplace is relevant to the question of motive for the employer’s discriminating against you.This is especially true where your employer has retaliated against you for complaining about sexual harassment but denies having taken such action.There is a chance that the judge could exclude evidence of others’ being harassed because it is more prejudicial than probative but, if allowed, it is powerful evidence that would be difficult for the employer to overcome. ​

Much controversy has arisen as of late over Twitter’s little blue checkmark, and exact who and more particularly, who does not receive this illustrious mark of approval from the social media tycoon.

Twitter has not been abundantly clear on exactly how they determine that a user has earned the mark of verifiability, but it is generally recognized as a means of protecting the identities of famous individuals, as to prevent imposters from creating accounts in their name. Unsurprisingly, when Twitter recently awarded the mark of verification to far-right organizers Jason Kessler, the main coordinator behind the alt-right Charlottesville march and Richard Spencer, infamous ringleader of the far-right movement and creator of Altright.com, users were up in arms. Many felt that through verification, Twitter was placing an insignia of support on the identities of certain controversial individuals. Twitter has subsequently removed verification from several alt- right users such as the above mentioned activists, as well as far-right organizers Laura Loomer, James Allsup, and Tommy Robinson. The company has also removed the account of notorious white-supremacist Twitter user Tim Gionet, better known by his alias “Baked Alaska.”

Since the beginning of 2017, there have been eight terrorist attacks in the United States. The death toll from these events has ascended over 100, with hundreds of more individuals seriously injured from these atrocities. Although each of these incidents were horrific and barbaric acts of violence, the American public is unfortunately becoming desensitized, as these tragedies are sadly becoming commonplace. As a 22-year-old woman, I have had the sobering experience of living through the “worst terrorist attack in modern history”, multiple times. Although one would expect these tragic events to function as a catalyst for our country’s leader to bring the American people together, President Donald Trump has used these incidents as an impetus for anti-Muslim rhetoric.Through differential coverage of these attacks, he has aimed to exemplify to the public exactly who fits the stereotype of a “terrorist” characterizing Muslim perpetrators as such, while referring to white attackers as merely “mentally ill”. As we all know, on November 5th, 2017 Devin Patrick Kelly, a 26-year-old white male opened fire on a congregation in Sutherland Springs, Texas killing 27 innocent people. Numerous warning signs could have alerted the police to Kelly’s potential for mass violence from Facebook posts of assault rifles, to previous convictions for rape and domestic violence, as well as the brutal abuse of a child. Still, Kelly was unsurprisingly able to slip through the gaping cracks created by our severely lax gun control laws, obtaining an AR-15 assault rifle which he used to unload 15 rounds of ammunition into the Sutherland Springs church. However, in reaction to this tragedy, President Trump claimed that the root of the problem lies not in gun control laws, but rather that the shooting was the product of a “mental health problem”. Conversely, On October 31st 2017, when Sayfullo Saipov, a Muslim Uzbek national drove a bus down a bike lane in Manhattan, NY killing eight, President Trump immediately took to Twitter calling this man an “animal” who should “get the death penalty”. Trump also cited this incident in his promise to terminate the visa lottery program through which Saipov was able to immigrate to the U.S., advocating for intensive vetting of all immigrants. Compared to Kelly, Saipov had virtually no prior criminal history. If Kelly had been vetted with even a fraction of the vigor with which Trump advocates for Muslim immigrants, one could argue the Sutherland Springs attack may never have occurred at all. Rather than encouraging the American people to stay united in the aftermath of these tragedies, President Trump has been using these incidents to further scapegoat the Muslim community as the face of terrorism in America, while white terrorists are given a pass on the grounds of diminished mental health. We as a nation must come together to understand that this differential coverage is not rooted in any fragment of fact or reality, but rather functions as a strategic method for dividing Americans, in aims of receiving support for anti-Muslim legislation. If the perpetrators of these numerous acts of violence have taught us anything, it is that the face of terrorism has no race, color, or national origin. Citations: http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/31/us/new-york-shots-fired/index.htmlhttps://newrepublic.com/minutes/145665/donald-trumps-response-sutherland-springs-shooting-disgracehttps://theintercept.com/2017/11/08/texas-shooting-devin-kelley-white-privilege/http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/02/politics/trump-terror-attack-language/index.htmlhttp://www.johnstonsarchive.net/terrorism/wrjp255a.html

Over the last weekend, our rookie President made his poorly-informed opinion known about the First Amendment rights of NFL, NBA, and MLB players who choose to kneel during the National Anthem at the beginning of professional sports games. Originally an individual effort, former 49er’s Quarterback Colin Kaepernick caused a lot of controversy when he first kneeled to protest “wrongdoings against African Americans and minorities in the United States” back in 2016.Since Kaepernick’s interview in August of 2016, America hasn’t exactly made any progress in addressing racial tension, and other professional athletes, some whole teams, have decided to use their platform to draw attention to the issue as well. Unfortunately, this protest serves as an excellent microcosm from which we can explore common themes that perpetuate racism in the United States.

First and foremost, the main message of this protest is distorted and obscured in such a way that centers the feelings of white people. The first way in which it’s distorted is through disqualification. One of the favorite critiques of this protest is that professional athletes make too much money to be complaining about oppression. While it’s understandable that people would be frustrated that those who are far wealthier than them could consider themselves oppressed, it fails to recognize the common fallacy that lies in conflating issues of race and class. Contrary to the narrative of meritocracy, simply being in possession of wealth does not make a person immune from discrimination based on race – especially if it occurred in the past. While it might shelter or prevent someone from facing the negative economic impacts of racial discrimination immediately, it doesn’t nullify or make experiences of racism unreal.

The second way this protest is distorted is through the message itself. Despite protesters being quite clear with their intentions, talking heads like Tomi Lahren, Tucker Carlson, and even Sarah Huckabee Sanders have been complicit in constructing a nationwide strawman that supposes athletes are protesting the flag, American armed forces, and as hyperbolic as it sounds, America in general. As a consequence, hard-working folks have convinced themselves that they are responding in kind by destroying jerseys, coats, and tickets they have already paid for as a symbol of their discontent for the NFL and the players protesting. Without engaging with the issues of systemic discrimination, people have dismissed the argument by insisting those who do not stand for the Pledge or the flag are simply disrespectful of America and the people who serve(d) in our military.

The third and final way this protest is distorted is through obfuscation. People critical of the protests also present a false dichotomy in which players kneeling during the Pledge aren’t doing anything to solve the problems they are protesting. Media attention via depriving America of its favorite pastimes aside, professional athletes are some of the most effective philanthropists in our society. In particular, Colin Kaepernick set up a foundation “to fight oppression of all kinds globally, through education and social activism” by donating $1,000,000 to organizations that engage inner-city youth, help homeless people, or advocate for people-based public policy.

If we dive deeper into this controversy, we will find this isn’t the first time it’s happened either. Professional athletes who have used their platform for social activism – particularly racial equity – have been met with hostility. Why? To spectators and fans, athletes are representations of their hometown, an extension of themselves. Especially when it contradicts their narrative, it is completely unacceptable to some people that their political and individual agency encroach upon their duty to entertain and represent their locale. Intentional or not, in tandem with the apathy towards their cause, the suggestion that Black athletes should just ‘stop complaining and do their job’ echoes the sentiments of slave-owners and chain-gang operators of years past.

​When we zoom out to look at professional sports at large, the uncritical eye might suggest we’ve reached a level of equity unseen in other industries because Black people are overwhelmingly represented in America’s favorite professional sports. However, this perspective diverges from the way we discern how diverse an industry is. Race theorist and basketball enthusiast Ibram Kendi suggests: “We should determine diversity in sports, just like outside of sports, not by the transient players but by the people who are permanent, like the owners, like the coaches, like the sports writers, like the executives.” If those groups “are lily-white, then [a sport] is simply not diverse.”

​As the NFL continues its season, and Donald Trump begins to double-down on anti-Constitutional rhetoric, it will be interesting to see how the market responds to looming boycotts and continued controversy. Stay tuned! ​

Nearly a decade ago, before his notorious interruption of Taylor Swift’s VMA acceptance speech, Kanye West lit news media on fire when he made the proclamation, “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” in relation to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Mike Myers’ reaction and the gratuitous memes that followed aside, Kanye was making the point in less than diplomatic words that climate change and natural disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, or the most recent Hurricane Harvey in Texas, disproportionately affect poor people and communities of color. Before, during and after a storm, racial and economic disparities make experiencing climate change and natural disasters more difficult for people on the marginalized end of the spectrum.​ In the days and hours approaching a storm, people do what they can to prepare. Preparation takes many forms – stockpiling necessities, protecting properties and assets, and in dangerous enough situations, evacuating. The CDC suggests you make a disaster-preparedness kit before a disaster strikes, but for people who live on subsistence wages, securing three days’ worth of food or additional prescriptions can be completely unaffordable. This is particularly true when, despite its illegality, merchants choose to inflate the prices of necessary goods in an exponential fashion. For poor neighborhoods that already experience a relative lack of consumer choice, this can be doubly debilitating.

Like many other law schools around the country, UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt) reconvened on Monday, August 21, and I was among the 304 new 1L students, 64% of which are women and 42% of which are people of color (part of the reason I chose to attend Boalt). Though I’m exhausted, I feel inspired and humbled by my classmates and professors, and I am filled with excitement for the next two years and nine months.As a 1L, I am assigned to a “module” of about 30 other students with whom I share all my classes. Although the classes 1Ls take each semester vary from module to module, every student will take Torts, Civil Procedure, Criminal Law, Property, and Contracts throughout their first year. Additionally, all 1Ls take Legal Research & Writing in the fall and Oral Advocacy in the Spring. My “mod” convenes for Torts, and we take Property and Civil Procedure with two other modules to comprise one “super-mod.” Additionally, our Legal Research & Writing classes comprise students from all three mods in our super-mod.The workload, as expected, has been immense. We have already completed several writing assignments and dozens of case briefs. For Civil Procedure, my class was assigned an entire book to read this week, in addition to our typical amount of weekly reading. That being said, it has been incredibly interesting, valuable, and fulfilling to apply what I’m learning inside the classroom to the work I had the opportunity to be involved with at the Civil Rights Justice Center. While many of my classmates have lamented that their experiences as legal assistants did not prepare them for law school, I have applied the knowledge I gained at the CRJC to my classwork every single day. Moreover, my professors have done a remarkable job of applying course themes to current events and legal activism. As someone whose interest in becoming an attorney stems from my belief in the law as a tool of social justice, I have loved it. One way that I believe Boalt is special is the collegial sense of community at the law school. This week, our new Dean hosted four dinners at his home—one for each super-mod and one for faculty. At our super-mod dinner, I spoke with professors and classmates about the ways past Boalt students have bolstered each other, and the ways we can do so in the coming months and years. This collaborative, kindhearted culture is what is deeply needed in the legal profession, and I am so glad to be attending a school that values compassion as much as it values hard work. As I take my next steps towards advancing my career in social justice and civil rights, I know I am doing so at a school and amongst peers that want to see me succeed.

7:20 – After snoozing my alarm once or twice, I get up and get ready. I’m exhausted, but I know I have to be on the road before 8:00 AM.7:55 – I grab a granola bar and leave the house in time to beat commute traffic, which somehow gets ten times worse by 8:00. During my drive, I listen to podcasts and mentally recite the issues and rules of cases I had to brief for today. My professors occasionally cold call—not to embarrass us, but to make sure the class discussion isn’t dominated by a few confident voices.8:15 – I arrive at the off-campus parking structure, four blocks from the law school. My dad used to park in this same structure when he was earning his Bachelor’s Degree here!8:35 – After buying a very large coffee and putting my books in my locker, I make it to my first class (Property) just early enough to complain with my seat neighbors about the amount of reading we were assigned. In class, we discuss the “dibs doctrine” and the varying degrees of property rights. One of our assigned cases for today was Popov v. Hayashi, and my classmate suggests that the Court could have deferred to standard MLB rules to determine whether the plaintiff had achieved full control over the ball in question. Seriously, my peers are so cool and smart.9:50 – I fill up my water bottle during passing period and walk to our next class, Civil Procedure. Two classmates and I quickly discuss the plan for completing our group project over the weekend. Because I have experience writing Complaints from my time at the CRJC, I offer to get the ball rolling for us.11:05 – I amble downstairs to our final class of the day (Torts) and grab my book from my locker, which always takes a few tries to open (thanks for nothing, high school). This is a much smaller class than the other two, so I prepare to participate plenty without fear of embarrassing myself. Today, we have an exercise in representing the two parties in a case we had read for today. One of my classmates and I spar over our hypothetical clients, but resolve later to make up over beers the next day.12:25 – I dawdle outside the classroom with my peers, making plans to attend office hours, study together later, or meet up for Bar Review (a schoolwide weekly bar crawl).12:45 – There aren’t ever any classes scheduled during the next hour because so many affinity groups, clubs, and journals host lunch meetings. On most days, I’m attending one of these meetings to score some free Thai food and learn something new, but today, I attend a Lexis training (no Thai food, but there is pizza!). All 1L students are required to complete a Lexis or Westlaw training by the end of this week. It’s boring, but I’m inspired to earn my daily search points and get free stuff.1:45 – The bulk of my day is done and now I can focus my attention on reading and case briefing. I usually love to work in our gorgeous law library, but if I’m feeling restless I’ll sit in the lounge adjacent to the law school’s café, so I can get up and chat with people as needed.6:00 – Hopefully by this point I’ve finished enough work to leave a casebook or two in my locker. I’ll most likely have to take at least one home anyway, though.6:20 – I arrive home and recap my day with my boyfriend, which mostly involves telling him what kind of free lunch I got today and whether any of my friends were cold-called.7:30 – We eat dinner and watch TV while I work on some reading that requires less focus (sorry, Legal Research & Writing).10:00 – By this time all of our shows are over and I’m back to my desk, concentrating on case briefing for a little while.12:30 – Ideally, I’ll be showered and in bed by this point! Because I try to get so much of my reading finished on campus, I can usually get nearly seven hours of sleep. This also allows me to keep a full day open on the weekends, although that could change when I eventually join a student-led pro-bono project later this semester!

In the wake of Charlottesville, and the ensuing protests afterwards, your social media feed has probably been full of debates about whether Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, and the Alt-Right who applied for a permit in Charlottesville had a right to demonstrate, regardless of the message they were trying to send or the body armor they donned while doing so. If you’ve exhausted yourself fighting with second cousins and high school classmates, take consolation that you are just one of many minds that have grappled with this question.

Free Speech is one of the five protected rights enshrined in our First Amendment, and is indeed one of the things that can make America a great place to live. However free speech is not a uniquely American idea. The Ancient Greeks are attributed with the original creation of free speech – it is the foundation of democracy and gives us intellectual and social space to push the questions surrounding our existential meaning. Clever as they were, they also had problems with its boundaries. Socrates, a philosopher famous for a quote taken during his testimony, “an unexamined life is not worth living”, was sentenced to death for making fun of the king.

Freedom of speech has also been enshrined in International Law. Both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights lay out the importance of individuals being able to express, share, and receive information and opinions freely. Many other countries have free speech worked into their domestic law. Many of these laws tend to guarantee the same right to free expression that we get in America. Some go so far as to outlaw things like Holocaust Denial or speech aimed at limiting other people’s rights.

Speaking specifically to swastikas, the SCOTUS ruled “A community need not wait to be subverted by street riots and storm troopers; but, also, it cannot, by its policemen or commissioners, suppress a speaker, in prior restraint, on the basis of news reports, hysteria, or inference that what he did yesterday, he will do today” in the National Socialist Party v. The Village of Skokie (1977).They additionally reason that allowing the government to make decisions about what is or isn’t offensive is tricky, as people could be subject to mob rule, i.e. people in a city or a neighborhood could just as easily revert to bigoted ideas about who should be allowed to express themselves in the community. Ironically, because of the precedent it would set to outlaw a specific opinion or perspective, it is in defense of marginalized people that hate speech continues to be protected.

An interesting concept when trying to dissect the debate is the Paradox of Tolerance. Philosopher Karl Popper suggests that maintaining a tolerant society is not contingent upon extending that tolerance to people who perpetuate intolerance. In fact it is necessary for the survival of a tolerant society that we “not […] tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”From this author’s perspective: unfortunately, Karl Popper isn’t in congress.​ Long story short: Yes, in the United States, hate speech is protected speech unless it puts a person’s life in imminent danger. While there is clearly an argument to be made that the historical context of Nazi propaganda presents a message of danger, the images or speech itself is not tantamount to the genocide they advocate. Whether hate speech deserves to be protected is still a contentious issue, regardless of partisan affiliation, and great minds alike have advocated for either position.